Drug abuse is a serious problem, many people are blind to the abuse. It is not only illegal drugs being abused, but also legal drugs, prescribed by doctors and seen on commercials. Everyone seems to want a quick easy cure to everything. Not many people think twice about taking a pill to relieve them of minor pains or problems. People are not always aware of the trauma they are causing on themselves by always taking the easy way around matters.

In his essay “America’s Altered States”, Joshua Wolf Shenk expresses his feelings on illicit and licit drug use and abuse. He states that his “lifelong struggle with mental disease has consistently brought him back to write about drug policy, pharmacology, and mental illness” (266). He suggests, “longing for relief is a central experience of humanity” (266). “It is all right to alter your mind and body as long as you have a note from your pharmacist” (267). It is illegal to experience the same effects without that note. They advertise and push the legal drugs, but antagonize and punish the illegal ones, with close or less altering effects. It is a way of making money off of people and disorders. Shenk’s drug problem s

ocial life is revolved around some sort of consciousness-altering substance” (269). When the abuse is pharmaceuticals it is looked at as healthy, anything else is looked upon as a problem. The government is now doing its part with the “Drug Free America” ad campaign. The campaign brings drugs to our attention and the problems the come with taking them. Many illegal drugs are misinterpreted, and legal are overlooked. The bottom line of Shenk’s essay is that people are too dependent on drugs a big part over the counter.

The essay has brought up many points that I have overlooked in the past, and made me open my eyes and mind to thoughts and realities of all drugs. There are severe drug problems and not only with the illegal ones. Our culture is too dependent on the fixation of pills curing everything. There are other procedures to our problems. Doctors should only prescribe potent medications as a last resort. I do not think that there should be billboards or advertisements for prescribed drugs, because if you need them I think the doctor should inform you on the drug, that’s their job. With the advertisements people start to diagnose themselves. There needs to be a lot of changes to our culture and our viewpoint on drugs.

“From 1970 to 1998, the inflation-adjusted revenue of major pharmaceutical companies more than quadrupled to $81 billion, 24 percent of that from drugs affecting the central nervous system and sense organs” (267). “Sales of herbal now exceed $4 billion a year” (267). This shows that drugs are a major money making industry and that is why doctors first resort is suggesting pres

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